


Labyrinthine Interlude

by Maldoror_Chant



Series: One Piece Interludes [3]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Camaraderie, Gen, Humor, Labyrinth - Freeform, Straw Hat Insanity (the best insanity there is)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-30 01:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12643056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: The Straw Hats end up chained to pillars (even though it's not Tuesday) while their captain has to find his way through a deadly maze. Truly deadly. The various monsters, traps and lethal devices aren't too much of a problem, but logic puzzles? No way. Time to rally around their captain.





	Labyrinthine Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: At some point after Alabasta and before Water 7

"No, you don't have to explain that bit any further," said Nami, rolling her eyes. "I got it. Luffy, challenge, really big maze, treasure if he wins, death if he loses, of course that bonehead said yes before you even stopped talking. But what I want to know is, what does that have to do with me - and all the others - chained to these pillars?"

The Master of the Maze, as he'd requested to be called, nodded beneath the cowl of his long robe. "Those are the stakes."

There was a thoughtful silence from the assembled and manacled Straw Hats.

"So..." Sanji looked moodily at the shackles before stuffing his hands in his pockets as far as the slack of the chains would allow. "When you said 'death if he loses', you weren't talking about his death, were you."

"He'll be dead anyway. That's how you lose in the maze." The Master of the Maze's face was nothing more than a patch of shadows beneath his hood, but he could still manage a good smirk. "Your lives, however, will also be forfeit."

"Figures," said Sanji. 

This offbeat reaction left a small silence in its wake as their captor waited for an outcry which failed to materialize. 

Finally one of the Straw Hats stirred. "Hey, MM."

"Master of the Maze," snapped the MM once he figured out Zoro was addressing him.

"Whatever. Death if he loses, fine, but in that case I'm going down there with him. Why is Luffy the only one who gets to fight?" 

"It is up to the captain alone to face the challenge of the Maze," announced the MM in a stuffy, pompous way which marked him as a traditionalist of the old school amongst people who bunged other people into mazes. "You will stay here at our mercy until he either dies or stands before you to free you. As he is the soul of his ship and crew, so all your lives are-"

"Feh," Zoro muttered as he glanced around. Their pillars were sunk deep into the floor of an elegant open pavilion. It was built on a platform situated dead center of the maze, affording them a plunging view of its twists and turns carved out of rock and spread across the countryside. Zoro failed to look impressed, or even interested.

"Just ignore him," Nami told the MM with a curt nod. "Go on. What's this maze thing about?"

The MM took a few seconds to regroup and get his rhetoric up and running again. "The Grand Maze of Minoa is centuries old and has bested many. Once in its maw, few ever emerge. If your captain dies, as is more than likely, you will follow shortly thereafter. Unless, of course, you buy back your lives with all of the possessions on your ship."

"Oh, that's not too bad then," said Usopp, a little relieved. "I mean, Luffy will come and get us of course, but if he doesn’t, we can always just give them-"

"Over your dead body, Usopp."

"Um, don't you mean 'over my dead body', Nami? That's the expression-"

"And that's what I said."

Sanji cowed Usopp further with a deadly look. "It's absolutely out of the question. Be a man, Usopp! I will die before I ask Nami-swan to give up her pretty dresses, her lacy underwear, her bikini, her-"

"Money," said Nami firmly. "And now that that's established, MM-"

"Master of the-"

"-why don't we move on to the important part." 

From the short silence beneath the cowl, the MM must have thought that death or ransom _was_ the important part.

"The treasure," Nami rapped out. "What do we win when Luffy shows up?"

"Oh." The MM went to open a casket atop a pedestal to the left of the captive crew. " _If_ he shows up, he'll have earned the right to bear away the Treasure of Minoa, which is-"

"-a bunch of trinkets and gems worth all of 700,000 berry," Nami cut in, appraising the revealed contents with one professional glance, "but it's better than nothing. I _might_ not kill that dunce when he gets here. As long as he doesn't make us wait too long. What's this maze like, then?"

"Its fiendish complexity will have your captain lost for days. Indeed, you may all die of thirst before he falls to one of its innumerable dangers."

"Could be worse. He could have the marimo's sense of direction."

"Shut your yap, cook."

"It's innumerable dangers," the MM repeated. "Such as monsters. Huge, ravenous monsters," the MM added when this failed to elicit much of a response. "Tripwires. Pitfalls. Crocodile pits. Spring-loaded hair-trigger traps!"

The Straw Hats looked at him mutely, waiting for him to finish.

"...And that's not all, there are dangers gathered from the remotest regions of the Grand Line, strange life forms the likes of which you've never seen, as well as other challenges such as logic puzzles-"

The MM was rocked back by a multi-throated groan of despair. 

"LUFFY! You IDIOT!"

"Hey Nami? Is that you? Whoohoo, I'm over here!"

Every head swiveled towards the direction of that cheerful shout. They could see a long rubbery arm wave and a flash of red shirt two hundred yards away. The maze was bowl-shaped, which, combined with the height of the pavilion, gave the Straw Hats a good view of their captain. Also a good view of the many spectators who'd crowded around the edges of the maze; losing visiting pirates in labyrinths was apparently the local pastime, and great entertainment value. The Straw Hats were willing to bet it was more interesting than watching cows, which was what the daily routine of the island seemed to otherwise consist of. 

"What excellent acoustics," Robin murmured. "It must be the construction. Early Minoan. They built exquisite amphitheaters too."

"Yes, you'll hear your captain's cries of agony heralding your demise," said the MM, rallying. "And you can see him as well. Here, let's have a look at him as he confronts his first challenge and despairs."

With that, the MM fiddled with a console beneath a large screen in front of the pillars. Electricity crackled in a vacuum tube, a turbine huffed, the large screen flickered into grainy black and white life to show Luffy scratching his stomach through his vest, face screwed up in a look of concentration, or possibly a headache.

"...'forsooth, I always tell the truth'," he was muttering, voice crackly through the small den-den mushi beneath the MM's console. "...'the red door is a liar-' wait a minute, how can a _door_ lie? This is stupid."

"No. Don't tell me." Unlike his captain, Usopp was despairing for all he was worth. "He's hit a logic puzzle already?"

The MM tinkered with a big knob on the console and the view on the screen juddered and swiveled to see what Luffy was looking at. There were three large stone doors out of the cul-de-sac Luffy was in, with words engraved on each of them and further instructions explaining the puzzle painted on the floor, but the Straw Hats didn't have the time to decipher any of it because just then Luffy read aloud "-'I am the safe way out'. Right, it's this one!" and kicked open the door.

"Oh dear, that's almost bound to be the wrong answer-" Robin started to say and was interrupted by the mellifluous twang of a dozen spears hurtling out of the opening.

"Feh, that was over too quickly," the MM sneered. "He- huh?"

The camera had swung around again to show Luffy stretched out in all sorts of interesting bends and directions to avoid the spears that had hurtled past him.

"Whoa, hey, that could have hurt someone!" Luffy regained his shape with a snap and glanced back at the spears sunk into the wall behind him. "If that was the safe way out, I'm sure glad I didn't open the other doors."

"That was lucky," Chopper declared, small, furry and solemn as he watched the screen.

"Yes, it was," the MM snarled, glaring at same. "But Devil Fruit or not, he won't escape the other dangers of the labyrinth-"

"One of those spears nearly snagged his hat. If it had, you and your maze would be in deep trouble."

"Chopper's got a point." Usopp looked down at the platform beneath them with some anxiety. It suddenly didn't seem as solid and Gum-Gum-Whip-proof as before. "Are we sure we're quite safe up here?"

"Safer than if we were with that _dunderhead_ ," Nami snarled, glaring at the screen.

Luffy had stopped on the threshold of the now harmless door and was looking back at the other two with an expression of intense curiosity.

"No. Oh no. He's not going to open the last two doors just to see what's behind them. Is he?" Sanji asked, sounding more like he was pleading for someone to contradict him rather than because he believed Luffy's common sense would prevail.

"He what?" said the MM.

"Say, just for the sake of asking," Usopp whispered hoarsely to his nakama, low enough to pass unheard by the MM and the nearby Minoan guards, "why are we chained up? I mean, why did we let these guys clap us in iron?"

"Captain's choice," Zoro answered. "Luffy picked up the gauntlet, so we had to cooperate on this end." He was leaning back against his pillar, chained arms crossed and eyes closed as if he was contemplating a nap. 

"Yeah, but couldn't we have waited for him here without the shackles? They weigh down the hands...and my nose is starting to itch a lot. I think I'm developing my imminent-death-via-Luffy-losing-to-a-maze allergy."

"I think we are all for once," Sanji muttered, watching Luffy walk away from the disarmed door and head towards the one on his left with an optimistic bounce in his step. 

Then their captain stopped and looked up, down and around. "Huh? Robin? Where are you?" 

As one, the Straw Hats twitched and carefully did _not_ look at their nakama who'd closed her eyes with a serene expression on her face. 

On screen, a grinning Luffy had taken off his hat and was looking into the bowl. "Oh, okay," he said.

"What-" The MM spun around to give the chained crew a suspicious look. They all looked back innocently. Robin's lips had stopped moving.

"Oh yeah, he does that," said Nami, dimpling in a charming way. "When our captain gets really stressed, he talks to his hat. He's named it Robin."

"...Is he quite right in the head?"

"Have you met him?" Zoro asked dryly. 

The MM went back to adjusting the camera's knob, muttering various statements of disbelief regarding the amount of bounty placed on a lunatic. His fiddling provided Robin with a handy line of sight to go along with their plunging view of the labyrinth and the occasional distant flash of red that was their captain, now heading unerringly in the right direction through the twists and turns.

"Despite his little hat-related eccentricities, he's remarkably good at navigating mazes," Nami lied with perfect aplomb before the MM could even start to wonder about that out loud.

"It doesn't matter if he is. He's doomed. He's taken the wrong path."

"What do you mean?" Usopp craned his neck to spot Luffy. At his side, Robin suddenly looked thoughtful, which was usually a bad sign. "He's heading straight towards us. He's less than a hundred yards away now." Luffy had disappeared as a dip in the path took him into an underground chamber-

From which came terrific snarling sounds.

"That moron is doomed," the MM repeated with relish. "The monstrous hydra will devour him." 

"What's going on?" Nami hissed.

"I'm afraid I can't see, Navigator-san," Robin murmured. "No line of sight."

"Hey, MM-"

"Master of the Maze!"

"Fine, right," said Sanji indulgently. "Where's the picture, MM?"

" _Master_ of the _Maze_. I can't put cameras in the hydra's den, it eats them, but we'll soon be hearing your captain's howls stop and the sound of his bones being crunched."

The only howls that stopped were, predictably enough, the hydra's. There might have been the sound of bones being crunched, but it was hard to tell amongst the thumps and the wallops. Five minutes later Luffy reappeared on the screen as he walked out the other side of the den, brushing a spot of blood from his hat and then looking pleased as Robin started whispering to him again.

"Yeah, he's doomed for sure," Nami drawled. "Who's the moron now, huh, MM?" Because the only people allowed to call Luffy a moron were his crew and his friends, and the MM had yet to earn that right by a long mile.

"Silence, woman!" 

"Oi, speak politely to Nami-swan, you cotton-headed freak."

"Silence all of you!" the MM gibbered to a backdrop of crashes as Luffy solved another logic puzzle in his own inimitable fashion, only two stones' throw away. "Your captain is doomed for certain now!"

"You sure about that this time, huh?" Zoro asked, eyes still closed.

"That small park he's just entered is the haunt of the Siren Flowers," the MM cackled, giving his expressions a good workout beneath the cowl.

"Those big bulbs in the planters?" Sanji asked, examining the pleasant garden visible on the black-and-white screen.

"Yes! They-"

"They look like large onions to me."

"They are from a distant island on the Grand Line. The sub-harmonic cries they emit gently lull their victims into stopping, and then resting, and then closing their eyes-" He was interrupted as Luffy fast-forwarded through the steps and crashed into a snoring rubbery heap

"Well, this sucks," said Sanji eventually. 

"Brilliant observation, dumbass-cook."

"Shut up, fuckwit. If dying means no longer putting up with your boneheadedness, it'd almost be worth it. But...I wish I could cook one last meal before kicking it. Hey, MM, think that's possible?"

" _Master of the Maze_ you-"

"I'd let you have some. Finest food you'll have ever tasted. I'm thinking...smorgasbord."

"Sanji-kun," said Nami, "is this really the time-"

"No, please, Nami-swan, let me dream. A huge buffet! I see ham joints glazed with honey, haunches of venison-"

"Hey!" 

"-of lamb, that okay, doctor?" 

"Not really, but it's better than nothing."

"It'll be better than _anything_. Haunches - no, whole racks of lamb. Pork! Roasted whole and golden with apples in their mouths. Huge fish steaks, carved out of sea-kings and baked with hollandaise. No, with meat sauce!" Sanji's voice had gradually risen until it was ringing with the fervor of fanatics and madmen (the MM was looking on with a certain admiration for his form). "Meat sauce with meat! What an innovation! _Meat stuffed with ground meat drowning in meat sauce along with meat sausages-_ "

"Sanjiii! I'm hungry!" shouted the den-den mushi and a nearby holler synchronously.

"Oh look, Captain-san's awake," said Robin, smiling at the screen.

"Yeah, fancy that," Nami grumbled. "I feel nauseous."

"I'm with Luffy on that one. That's made me a bit hungry," Zoro admitted, tone grudging. "Hey, MM, any chance we can have a drink while we're waiting? How about some take-out?"

"Yeah, I'm starving too," Usopp said. "I hope Luffy hurries up."

"I'm peckish myself."

"Robin-chwan, I will feed you as soon as we're freed! Though I will always be a captive to your beauty-"

"Silence!"

Silence.

"Take-out's not an option?"

" _I said silence_!"

"Zoro, be polite, the man asked us to shut up," Usopp pointed out - very softly - as the maze's guards drew their weapons to enforce their master's orders.

Silence.

"Right." The MM took in a long, shuddering breath, let it out. "Your captain won't be freeing you, fools. He's about to walk into the final ring."

"Bash his way in," Nami corrected, speaking loudly enough to be heard over the crashes as Luffy barged and blunt-traumaed his way through the last wall circling the empty space around the pavilion's platform.

"He's lost. Do you see those?"

The crew turned to follow the MM's gesture as he pointed past their pillars at a cage taking up the entire second half of the pavilion. Behind the bars stood a bunch of very large animals with very large teeth. 

"They'd be hard to miss," Sanji drawled, looking over his shoulder. "They've been staring at us since you chained us up here."

"They're traditionally how we get rid of prisoners who cannot ransom their lives, but they have another purpose. We will release them into the final ring, where they will tear your captain to pieces." The MM made a sharp gesture, and one of the guards pulled a lever, opening a ramp down from the cage to ground level. The huge creatures stared at the prisoners for a few more seconds and then turned as one, quick and silent as ghosts, to rush through the cage opening, heading towards the maze and Luffy. "Nemean Wolves, twenty of them. As large as horses, as fierce as lions. Nobody has ever gotten past them."

"Oh, blow this for a pint of grog," Nami grumbled and started fiddling with her manacles.

The MM crossed his arms as he watched the screen. Even the guards had turned their backs on the prisoner's pillars and clustered around their boss to get a better view. "He is done for. They're maddened and feral."

"No they're not, they're just hungry," said Chopper in tones of reproach. "You should feed them more." 

"I'll feed them your captain. Will that do?"

"Well, no," Chopper said as the audience watched the ravenous Nemean Wolves run right past Luffy and on towards the wall he'd demolished. "Not if someone was feeling sorry for them and told them there's the remains of a large hydra to eat not too far away from here."

"Someone told them- what?! What are they doing?!" 

"Going to get themselves a snack by the looks of it. Good choice; I'm sure Luffy's too small and chewy for them." Sanji visibly approved of this culinary decision.

"Too tough as well," Zoro added, smirking at the screen.

The MM and his guards stared at Luffy who'd gotten past the last circle and was sauntering through the archway that led up the steep steps to the pavilion. Then, with an irritated gesture, the MM hit a button on his console.

There was a rattle and a crash, and Luffy was blinking at the bars of a cage trapping him in the portico.

"What the- I thought the wolves were the last hurdle!" Usopp looked anxiously at his captain. "But...Luffy will get out of there real quick. Right?"

It wouldn't seem so. As they watched, Luffy tried to stretch between the bars and pulled back with shaky steps as if he'd been hit with a high current.

"Seastone," said Chopper. "That's _low_."

"It's a trap like any other," the MM pointed out, but he was avoiding the prisoners' gazes and studiously watching the screen, his whole attitude shifty.

"No it's not," said Robin, absently holding out her hands. "I doubt the ancient Minoans had traps wired to a console. This is a new addition, and not part of the traditional maze. Captain-san could have avoided, out-thought or destroyed the other dangers in the labyrinth, but this one was triggered by you on the final stretch up to the pavilion. With only one way in, he could not avoid that. It runs counter to the very spirit of early Minoan labyrinth sacrifices- Ah, thank you, Navigator-san."

"So your maze is rigged," Sanji concluded, rubbing his wrists. 

The MM chose to ignore that, and twiddled with the knob until he caught Luffy in its scope. He didn't sound gloating this time, merely irritated as he said, "With the pull of a lever, the flagstones will open and drop him and the cage down a chute and into the ocean. I-"

A small object - a pachinko ball, to be exact - whistled past his cowl, clipping him in the ear in passing, and smashed into the button that had initially dropped the cage.

"What?!"

There was a grating sound as the cage's bars reversed direction and rose, letting Luffy through, but the MM missed that part. He'd spun around and was now trying to focus on the tip of Zoro's sword a mere half-inch away from his nose.

"Wh- guards!"

The guards around them stared at the tableau...and then slowly collapsed. Zoro had had a little discussion with them about mazes and fighting honorably before taking his argument to their upper management, all within the time it took for the patchinko ball to make its way to the console.

"But-but-but-... But how did you free-" 

"Here, I'll expect you'll want this back." Nami tossed a large key his way after freeing Chopper. "I sort of filched it from you when you chained us up. It's a little habit of mine. I wouldn't have used it if you'd played fair, mind you. Well, probably not."

"You could have told us," Usopp grumbled, slingshot aimed at the MM. "I wasn't worried, of course. Captain Usopp isn't afraid of a bunch of _cheats_. In fact, I was about to reveal my master plan for escaping-"

"Really?! Wow, Usopp! What was it?!"

"Um, I'll tell you later, Chopper. But it involved honey, three lengths of thread, a piece of bent wire and a colony of ants. So you see, Nami, you should have told us you had that key. I nearly exerted myself."

Nami's answer to that was lost as the ornamental gates behind the spluttering MM were slammed open and Luffy strolled in. 

"Hey, mister, your maze was fun. And I won! It was easy. Hi guys! It's too bad you couldn't come with me, you'd have loved it, but they told me you had to wait for me up here for some reason."

"You!" The MM spun around, once Zoro put away his sword and took a few steps towards Luffy. "You didn't win! You didn't navigate the maze, you totaled it!

Luffy scratched his head, nudging his hat forward. "...So? You said I couldn't climb up the walls and run along the top, but you didn't say anything about not knocking stuff down along the way."

"It- that- it went without saying!"

"Obviously it didn't," Robin said sweetly. 

"And you cheated!" the MM shouted, apparently not afraid of hypocrisy. "I don't know how, but those damned crewmen of yours helped you! You're captain of the ship! You were supposed to do it alone!"

"That's stupid," Luffy told him as he turned away. "I'm not alone. That's why I'm captain. Come on, gang! Sanji's going to cook up a meat feast!"

"You heard that?" Sanji, hands in his pockets, sauntered past the MM along with the rest of the Straw Hats. "Damn, I thought you were sleeping."

"I was!"

"Then how-...Never mind. Let's go pick up what the wolves have left of that hydra on the way out, and those siren onions. I'm low on supplies."

"Okay!"

"And thanks for the glitter, MM," Nami said, cheerfully patting the casket under her arm, which was when the MM realized that the Treasure of Whatever was no longer on its pedestal. They left him cursing and kicking his console. 

Ten minutes and one shopping expedition later, the Straw Hats emerged from the hydra lair and stopped. Their captain was looking thoughtfully in all directions.

"Luffy? Come on, it's straight ahead," Usopp said, already at the next hole in the labyrinth.

"Yeah, just follow the path of destruction," said Sanji, hauling up his end of a hydra steak. 

Luffy continued to look around brightly. 

A brief silence fell once more over the maze.

Zoro shifted his grip on the end of the steak Sanji had badgered him into holding, maneuvering the meat until he could draw one sword.

"Luffy?"

"Hmm?" 

"Which way?"

\- Usopp groaned and fished around his satchel for ammo, Chopper got a rumble ball ready, Nami growled beneath her breath and fitted her weapon's rods together, Sanji reached for his cigarettes and Robin smiled. 

Luffy picked a direction at random, ignoring the hole in the wall he'd made half an hour ago. "This way! It looks interesting."

And so that way they went.


End file.
